MDE just put out this news release with details about the standardized assessment for spring 2015.

MICHIGAN STUDENT TEST SYSTEM DEVELOPED FOR SPRING 2015 November 13, 2014 LANSING – Michigan’s public schools can begin moving forward in their planning for the online statewide student assessment in the Spring of 2015. The Michigan Department of Education announced today its updated assessment system, called the Michigan Student Test of Educational Progress (M-STEP). “This is great news for our local school districts,” said State Superintendent Mike Flanagan. “They’ve been very anxious to hear what the new assessment will be, as we developed a new test to comply with legislatively-mandated changes.” The new assessment was required by the state legislature for the Spring 2015 testing period. The legislature also required the Department of Education to re-bid its long-term assessment system that will begin in the Spring of 2016. The new assessment meets all of the requirements put into law by the legislature; that it be: an online assessment, with a paper-and-pencil option; aligned to the state standards; expanding writing assessments to additional grades; providing an increased number of constructed response test questions so that pupils can demonstrate higher-order skills, such as problem solving and communicating reasoning; and pilot tested before statewide implementation. M-STEP replaces the 44-year-old MEAP test, which was not online and measured the previous state standards. The Spring 2015 assessment will include Michigan-created content, as well as content developed by the multi-state Smarter Balanced Assessment Consortium. Educators from Michigan public schools helped develop and write test content that will appear on M-STEP.

“The changes in law diverted what the department and local school districts had been developing and preparing for over the past three years,” Flanagan said. “It put schools in some unwelcomed limbo while our experts scrambled to find testing content that met the legislative requirements.” The assessment for Spring 2015 is a one-year stopgap until the long-term assessment is awarded through the re-bidding process.

M-STEP includes the following assessments:

•   A Spring summative assessment for grades 3-8
•   A Michigan Merit Exam (MME) for grade 11, which includes a college entrance exam; a work skills component; and a summative component aligned to Michigan content standards

This will be the first time all statewide assessments will be administered online. To help prepare, nearly 1,900 Michigan schools have performed pilot online testing over the past three and a half years. The state Legislature has invested more than $100 million over the past two years to help get local districts technology-ready for the new assessments. To date, over 80 percent of schools meet the minimum technology requirement for the new assessment.

There still will be a paper-and-pencil option for schools if they believe they are not ready with the minimal technology requirements. Districts have until November 21 to request a waiver to administer the paper/pencil test. Due to the cost concerns of preparing the separate online and paper/pencil formats, and wanting to be the best stewards of public funds, MDE will not entertain change requests beyond that November 21 deadline date.

The entire Michigan Merit Exam for the Spring of 2015 will take longer for local schools to administer due to requirements in state law.   The high school test requires additional time because the college entrance and work skills tests that Michigan currently is contracted to use, do not measure the state’s standards for English language arts and mathematics. The move to more rigorous standards requires additional types of test questions not present on those assessments. As a result, the state is required to provide additional testing to ensure state and federal laws that require measurement of the state’s standards are met. The U.S. Department of Education (USED) has allowed a few states to get a federal flexibility waiver with a future plan to use only a college-entrance exam like ACT. However, USED cannot waive the Michigan law that requires the state assessments be aligned to the state standards. The majority of schools that are testing online will have greater flexibility and can configure testing, as desired, within the eight-week window the department has provided them. This provides ample opportunity for schools to plan their testing times. There will be eight partial days of testing for the paper/pencil option of the high school test in the spring. This option, which should be used only by those continuing to prepare their buildings for online testing, must continue to be spread in this fashion to assure adequate testing security.

School Accountability

MDE will be working with the USED to update Michigan’s school accountability model used in its flexibility waiver to the federal No Child Left Behind Act. These updates would recognize the changes in statewide assessments and improvements in identifying student academic growth and learning.

Last week, three bills (SB 66) related to the Michigan Merit Curriculum were discharged from Senate Committee to the Senate Floor. Senate Bill 66, which Oakland Schools supports, was unanimously approved with no changes by the House Education Committee on Wednesday.

SB 66 would amend the Revised School Code regarding the fulfillment of Michigan Merit Curriculum requirements for a high school diploma through a career and technical education (CTE) program. If a district requested information from the Department of Education about CTE programs that meet the requirements of the merit curriculum, that information would have to be furnished within a reasonable time. CTE best practices would also have to be posted on the Department website.  The bill would also require a school board to ensure that students were fully informed about how their graduation requirements could be fulfilled with CTE or another Department-approved program. School Districts would be “strongly encouraged” to establish programs whose completion, after high school graduation, would be credited toward achievement of a professional certificate, training, apprenticeship, or college credit in a specific career and technical field.

The bill is awaiting action on the House Floor.

As discussed in a previous blog post, Senate Bill 817 (Pappageorge, R-Troy) would amend the Revised School Code to delay the implementation of teacher and school administrator performance evaluation requirements, including conditions for the use of student growth and assessment data in conducting the evaluations.

House Education Committee reported the bill unanimously (with two members abstaining from the vote, Reps. Hooker and McMillin), and the bill is awaiting action on the House Floor.  This bill will likely move as the House now recognizes that the Senate will not be finalizing the full evaluation bills before the deadline passes for implementing the current law.

Senate Education held its first hearing on those larger bills, House Bills 5223 and 5224, this week.  During the hearing, the bill sponsors acknowledged further work is needed and the Committee Chairman noted his intention to hold more hearings and work on the bill into the fall.

Oakland Schools supports passage of SB 817 immediately, given that all schools would be out of compliance with law as of June 30, 2014, through no fault of their own.

Legislators in the House are hearing that the 3rd grade retention legislation may come up for a vote before summer break.

While the changes to the bills allow more flexibility, they still ultimately mandate retention for children in 3rd grade for up to two times, even though research on retention shows negative and harmful effects.

Further, one major issue still exists, which is that funding is not included in either of these bills.  While HB 5144 directs the MDE to seek public and private funding for the pilot projects required in the bill and the legislature is directed to fund the programs, the bills themselves do not contain funding and are, therefore, still an unfunded mandate.  Oakland Schools opposes the legislation.

Many legislators have concerns about the bills.  The concerns center on the effectiveness (or lack of effectiveness) for retention as a policy, the unfunded costs in the bills, and the impact on schools of a large group of children being retained for up to 2 years.

Legislative Content

HB 5111 would require children to be held back in 3rd grade until they reach proficiency level on the state assessment for reading.  The substitute that was reported included significant changes from the original bill aimed at offering exemptions to the retention law for children under certain circumstances.

Further, the bill pushes off the mandate for retention by starting with children in first grade this year, thus giving districts a chance to move more children to proficiency through targeted intervention prior to a child reaching the 3rd grade retention requirement.  The substitute allows the local superintendent to grant a good cause exemption to retention for the following reasons:
a)  The pupil has demonstrated 3rd grade reading on an alternative assessment approved by the State Superintendent.

b)  The pupil has demonstrated 3rd grade reading through a pupil portfolio through multiple work samples.

c)  The pupil is a student with a disability and the IEP indicates that participation in the state reading assessment is not appropriate.

d)  The pupil is a limited English proficient student who has had less than 2 years of instruction in an English language learner program.
The exemption can be initiated by the parents or the pupil’s teacher and must go through the principal and to the superintendent (or chief administrator for a charter).  Children who receive an exemption and are enrolled in 4th grade must be provided with intensive reading instruction and intervention with specialized diagnostic information and reading strategies. Students may retake the grade 3 assessment before grade 4 for a second chance to show proficiency.  The bill limits retention to two school years per student.

Finally, the bill was amended in committee to prohibit MDE from including a social studies component on the grade 3 state assessments or any pilot of that assessment in order to further the goal of reading proficiency.

Legislation with further interventions, HB 5144, was reported from committee as well.  House Bill 5144 would require the Michigan Department of Education (MDE) to adopt policies and programs to enable more Michigan children to attain proficiency in reading by the end of grade 3.  The MDE is required to submit a report to the legislature identifying reading programs that have been demonstrated to work and then MDE would have to recommend or develop a program that focuses on diagnostic evaluation, early intervention, tutoring, and mentoring.

Further for 2014-15, MDE would be required to implement a pilot program serving up to 400 K-2 students in up to four school districts.  Local districts are required to help ensure 3rd grade reading proficiency by using effective screening instruments to identify students having early literacy delays in grades K-3, notify parents of identified children, use intensive intervention for those students, and submit data to MDE.

Click below to watch Oakland Schools’ video statement on the proposed bill.